1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a juice extractor, and more particularly to a juice extractor having the grinding and squeezing functions concurrently.
2. Description of the Related Art
To extract juice inside a food material by an effort-saving operation, a juice extractor or a juice machine (not limited for the use of extracting fruit juices only) is generally used, wherein most juice extractors have a press mechanism for pressing the food material (including but not limited to a fruit) and squeezing juice out from the food material, and most juice machines have a rotary knife for cutting and blending the food material into a paste form, such as squeezing the juice out from the fruit or blending the fruit into a fruit paste. Some dieters may add water and condiments to produce a fruit juice, and others may blend corps such as soybeans, yellow beans or vegetables with water and condiments by a high-speed rotating knife to produce drinks such as soya milk and vegetable juices. Regardless of the juice extractor or the juice machine, the main concern is to fully extract the juice from the food material without waste.
A household juice machine disclosed in P.R.C. Pat. Application No. 200520120453.4 comprises a machine base, a motor, a blending cup, a juice cup, a residue cup and a feeder, wherein the motor is installed onto the machine base, and the blending cup includes a planar gear knife disk installed therein, and the planar gear knife disk is coupled to a motor axle by its thread, and the feeder is covered onto the top of the blending cup, and teeth of the gear knife of the planar gear knife disk are arranged radially with an inclined angle in a clockwise direction. The juice machine having a knife disk structure provides high-speed cutting and squeezing, without requiring a pushing rod to complete the process of squeezing juice. However, the aforementioned structure of the knife disk has the following drawbacks. During a high-speed rotation of the knife disk, juices in large chunks of fruit flesh or vegetable are not squeezed out completely at a preliminary cutting stage, and the large chunks are spun out from the knife disk into the residue container at the periphery of the knife disk due to centrifugal force, and thus giving rise to a low juice yield and a waste of raw material.